Thursday, 11 September 2014

‘Lookout’: The Folkestone Triennial

Can art revitalise a town? The Folkestone Triennial,
now in it’s third edition, believes that it will. In tandem with the
establishment of a creative quarter, the town has embraced art and design as
way of attracting new visitors and activity to what was once an important port,
much of whose former cargo now bypasses it through the Channel Tunnel and whose
former visitors head south on cheap flights. This is a town compelled to
re-invent itself.The Triennial attempts
to integrate art into the very fabric of civic space. These 21 guest artists
take a guerrilla approach by placing artworks under bridges, on rooflines,
within disused sites and even under the sea.

Lewis Biggs, the director, has named this year’s festival
‘Lookout’ taking a cue from the town’s maritime character. Some artists have
embraced the theme, such as Pablo Bronstein’s ‘Beach Hut, in the style of
Nicholas Hawksmoor, which resembles a miniature lighthouse placed beside other,
more modest and traditional huts painted in jaunty, seaside colours. On press
day, I saw Alex Hartley’s ramshackle eagle’s nest protruding from the roofline
of a prominent hotel and Sixties eyesore, but missed the artist perching on the
platform jutting out precariously over a car park, facing the sea. For the
duration of the festival, he will periodically crawl out onto this makeshift
ledge like an occupier or solitary mystic, combining architectural intervention
with performance.

Marjetica Potrc and Ooze, an architectural and design
practice, have constructed a temporary lift that rises up adjacent to the
town’s extraordinary Victorian railway viaduct, the highest in Britain.
Originally conceived as wind-powered, the
weather proved unreliable so the solution now is a digital screen indicating
how much energy the turbine is feeding into the national grid and how much energy
the lift extracts.

Other artists have taken a less technical approach, addressing
specific sites and associated histories of the town. Jyll Bradley has built a
temporary installation on the site of a former gasworks. Remembering days spent
picking hops, a crop indigenous to Kent, she has constructed a matrix of string
courses used to encourage the vines, supported by illuminated, upright struts. ‘Green/Light’ invites you to stroll through
this memorial to agricultural craft thereby revitalising what had become sad
and redundant.

The highlight of my visit was a sound sculpture,
‘Undélaissé’ by Amina Menia, set up on a derelict site once inhabited by a food
shop bombed during World War One. In an air raid, 60 queuing residents died.
The pathos of that event is amplified by wandering across this neglected plot, now
overgrown with thick clusters of buddleia that cuckoo plant colonising no-man’s
land. Hidden speakers within the undergrowth repeat recipes for baking bread
brought to the town by new migrants carrying memories of their roots. It’s a
haunting work that links together death, loss and the simple but universal
bonds of food, the stuff of life.

By the old harbour, Gabriel Lester has erected an impressive
structure made of bamboo poles that sits above redundant railway lines, like
much of Folkestone’s old infrastructure. Drawing on memories of living in
China, the pavilion becomes a focus for considering the port’s historic relationship
with the sea as trade increasingly reverts eastwards towards Asia.

As I strolled along the harbour front, I met Sarah Staton
standing outside her ‘sculptural pavilion’ a large freestanding steel sculpture
punctured with Modernist incisions. A bench shelters under the steel shell ringed
by edible plants. She’s hoping the hybrid shelter and bench can become a
permanent feature of the seashore.

Folkestone Triennial is not a grand affair like the Venice
Biennale or the Edinburgh Festival. It’s modest and humorous and vernacular
without losing ambition. While instigating the restoration of a local park, it
still hosts international artists such as Michael Sailstorfer whose ‘Folkestone
Digs’ has been generating most interest. Thirty pieces of gold are buried
beneath the sand of a harbour beach and ‘Folkestone Digs’ continues into the
future until all have been found.

I declined to roll up my trouser legs but enjoyed watching a
large scrum of journalists, visitors and locals digging through wet sand in a
hunt for gold hidden that morning under the cover of darkness. Despite some suspicions
of an elaborate hoax, the diggers trustingly began the mucky task with gusto, instinctively
hunting for treasure, like a pack hungry for food.

About Me

I am a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in Modern and Contemporary art. I teach at Christie's Education, Sotheby's Institute and work freelance at the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery. I am also a reviewer for Flash Art magazine.This blog is a place to comment on art and visual culture in London and abroad. I Tweet @Joshuaswhite and Five Senses can be found at http://joshuasimonwhite.blogspot.co.uk

For any publishing projects or media appearances, I can be reached at joshua@joshuaswhite.com. Formerly, I was a founding editor of Metrobeat (now Citysearch), New York, the first listings guide to the city and subsequently the launch producer of the BBC Online homepage.